Some account of the discovery of the Syriac version of the Ignatian Epistles has been
already given. We have simply to add here a brief description of the Mss. from which the
Syriac text has been printed. That which is named a by Cureton, contains only the Epistle to
Polycarp, and exhibits the text of that Epistle which, after him, we have followed. He fixes its
age somewhere in the first half of the sixth century, or before the year 550. The second us.,
which Cureton refers to as /?, is assigned by him to the seventh or eighth century. It contains
the three Epistles of Ignatius, and furnishes the text here followed in the Epistles to the Ephe-
sians and Romans. The third ms., which Cureton quotes as y, has no date, but, as he tells us,
"belonged to the collection acquired by Moses of Nisibis in a.d. 931, and was written apparently
about three or four centuries earlier." It contains the three Epistles to Polycarp, the Ephesians,
and the Romans. The text of all these mss. is in several passages manifestly corrupt, and the
translators appear at times to have mistaken the meaning of the Greek original.